yep...i think i heard some of the land masses
shifted 100 feet (in some areas)...

Art Mosher wrote:

Curiosity? Should not the Tsunami wave affect a high seas cruising
boat? I have seen no mention of it anywhere; but would have thought
there would be some damage to boats at sea. ??

- Art


Art,

We who live in boats, live on the boundary zone between water and air
where water shows it's most interesting effects. Intuitively you are
correct, we stand the chance of feeling the effect but it is mitigated
by water's ability to translate the wave from horizontal to vertical
which at the same time reduces it's power many fold and thus we can miss
the event with all the "background noise" already going on. Perhaps a
submarine at depth might have it's dishes rattled a little, but not so
us on the surface. It would be interesting to have someones observation
from an absolutely flat (no wind - dead) sea knowing it was about to happen.

We are most accustom to surface wind generated waves, an active subject
on this site at the moment... In these, water has both vertical and
horizontal components of motion and (most) all the energy of the wave is
contained in a shallow depth of water about equal to the scope or
peak-to-peak distance. If you look into surfing, the great spots are
places where long fetch waves are "funneled" and turned from tame smooth
rounded top seas into sharp faced monsters by gradients that turn
horizontal motion into up motion.

Tsunami waves are more characteristic of sound waves and travel by
compressibility of water (thus it's high speed) rather than surface
waves where water acts like a non-compressible liquid affected by
gravity. The tsunami energy is found all the way from near-surface to
bottom and the motion is only horizontal. The similar thing happens in
shallowing water as in the surfers best waves. Only in this case you
can make a case for the ocean "erupting" out of the bay as a visual
observation from the energy and movement being funneled by the bottom
and sides. Remember pictures of "your hard-of-hearing great great
grandpa" using that weird looking funnel stuck in his ear to hear you
better?

As the volume of water "thrust" up on shore runs back to the sea, boats
can kiss the bottom as fast flowing water recedes. We in boats can go
further down than we ever went up. Yet at anchor at depth is the place
to be as long as crud doesn't mess up our rode. It's great news that it
is a very rare event in daily living. Tsunamis even happen here on the
great lakes to much smaller extent.

It seems interesting when earthquakes energies are likened to atom
bombs. I suppose we do that to give perspective to our human ability to
release energy vs. natures ability, and to make some yardstick of
destruction as you compare war pictures of Japan. I would put good
money on this not being the first nor most destructive wave in geologic
time, but like Pompai we humans site our places to live by other
factors. My sadness for these people is deep, I pray they can put their
lives right soon, and the compassion demonstrated by the cruisers in the
neighborhood needs to be rewarded in some way. Today I hear the US
(maybe USGS or NOAA) says "there was nothing we could do even though we
knew for hours it was going to happen" so maybe these agencies need a
swift kick to change an attitude.

A fair amount of information is available on tsunamis, yet you and I
will probably spend greater effort toward understanding more likely to
happen things. I'm happy to see this will get into the cruising
publications so we can have a leg up at understanding how to avoid their
effects.

Skip

Art Mosher wrote:
Curiosity? Should not the Tsunami wave affect a high seas cruising
boat? I have seen no mention of it anywhere; but would have thought
there would be some damage to boats at sea. ??

- Art


From the Marine-L mailing list:

"News via ham radio transcription (I have "depersonalized" - ppp is a
person, yyy is a yacht) concerning the yachting community only:

We were quite shaken up at the prospect of what might have been, and
anxious about our friends in Chagos and Malaysia/Thailand.

yyy and all boats in Kilifi, Kenya are fine. We had unusual surges of about
a metre in and out of the creek, with strong currents and discoloured
upwellings. The boats waltzed in all directions around their moorings.
Nothing more dramatic than that. However down by the bridge the big green
coaster broke its moorings and washed ashore near the old ferry landing.
Fortunately she did not run amok amongst the yacht moorings. She was
refloated yesterday.

Our friend ppp aboard the yacht yyy in Chagos, reported all ok there - just
a lot of sand and water moving around. No news about boats in the Maldives,
though I don't expect there would be many at this time of the year.

Amazingly, and to our great relief, hundreds of yachts anchored along the
west coast of Phuket were also all ok. They said they just went up and down
and then watched aghast as the giant wave built up on the beach a few
hundred yards away, wrecking beachfront hotels and restaurants. It seems
there was one yacht casualty in Ao Chalong, which we would have thought to
be better protected. The pontoons in the Boat Lagoon Marina were under
water for a while.

In Langkawi, Malaysia, it appears that the marina at Rebak and the new one
at Telaga were damaged, with pontoons washed away. Don't know of yacht
casualties there, but providentially at least 2 of our friends , yyy and
yyy had just left and were safe outside.

Contrary to our fears, it seems that aboard a boat was one of the safest
places to be, and compared with the carnage ashore the yachting community
got off very lightly - thank goodness!

end transcript

Fair winds
Paul

Glen,
We were on a friends boat anchored at Nai Harn. Our boat is on the hard
at Boat Lagoon undergoing some paintwork and new teak deck.
Our total up and down movement would not have exceeded 3 metres.
Will gladly supply any further info if required.
Tony
S/V Ambrosia

In french TV they hacve said that the cost have moved from about 25m and
the axis of teh globe have changed.
that have effect on charts and on our GPS also
Take care
Thierry
www.goldschmidt.org
French web nautical guide

Jetcap a écrit :
Art Mosher wrote:

Curiosity? Should not the Tsunami wave affect a high seas cruising
boat? I have seen no mention of it anywhere; but would have thought
there would be some damage to boats at sea. ??

- Art



From the Marine-L mailing list:

"News via ham radio transcription (I have "depersonalized" - ppp is a
person, yyy is a yacht) concerning the yachting community only:

We were quite shaken up at the prospect of what might have been, and
anxious about our friends in Chagos and Malaysia/Thailand.

yyy and all boats in Kilifi, Kenya are fine. We had unusual surges of about
a metre in and out of the creek, with strong currents and discoloured
upwellings. The boats waltzed in all directions around their moorings.
Nothing more dramatic than that. However down by the bridge the big green
coaster broke its moorings and washed ashore near the old ferry landing.
Fortunately she did not run amok amongst the yacht moorings. She was
refloated yesterday.

Our friend ppp aboard the yacht yyy in Chagos, reported all ok there - just
a lot of sand and water moving around. No news about boats in the Maldives,
though I don't expect there would be many at this time of the year.

Amazingly, and to our great relief, hundreds of yachts anchored along the
west coast of Phuket were also all ok. They said they just went up and down
and then watched aghast as the giant wave built up on the beach a few
hundred yards away, wrecking beachfront hotels and restaurants. It seems
there was one yacht casualty in Ao Chalong, which we would have thought to
be better protected. The pontoons in the Boat Lagoon Marina were under
water for a while.

In Langkawi, Malaysia, it appears that the marina at Rebak and the new one
at Telaga were damaged, with pontoons washed away. Don't know of yacht
casualties there, but providentially at least 2 of our friends , yyy and
yyy had just left and were safe outside.

Contrary to our fears, it seems that aboard a boat was one of the safest
places to be, and compared with the carnage ashore the yachting community
got off very lightly - thank goodness!

end transcript

Fair winds
Paul

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 06:21:29 GMT, WaIIy
wrote:

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:06:32 GMT, Skip VerDuin
wrote:

Today I hear the US
(maybe USGS or NOAA) says "there was nothing we could do even though we
knew for hours it was going to happen" so maybe these agencies need a
swift kick to change an attitude.

What would you have them do?

The infrastructure to warn the people it affected is not in place.

Right. All that is needed to become part of the Pacific Rim
Tsunami warning system is to ask and TO SUPPLY A CONTACT PERSON
who is able to receive the warning and disseminate it. It's
free, but you have to ask, and you have to show you can make
use of the information. Pacific Rim knew about the quake, and
suspected the results, but had no one in the area to pass
the information to. (According to Wall St. Jour.)

WaIIy wrote:

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:06:32 GMT, Skip VerDuin
wrote:



Today I hear the US
(maybe USGS or NOAA) says "there was nothing we could do even though we
knew for hours it was going to happen" so maybe these agencies need a
swift kick to change an attitude.



What would you have them do?

The infrastructure to warn the people it affected is not in place.


Legitimate question, one that needs answering with time without sweeping
the effort under the rug.
And a multi-faceted issue that touches a lot of people with individual
answers.
The US has gone so far as to place sensors on the ocean floor with
satellite communication for early warning in places.
One answer is that big bucks are being spent for high risk areas with
wealth.
In other parts of the world today there are phones, radios, etc; lesser
forms of communications and readiness.

My statement goes more to attitude.
It is one thing to "shout" a warning but not be heard, a commendable and
frustrating position.
It is another thing to sit on your butt and attempt nothing when the
information is at hand.
As an outsider truly I don't know the reality, I can only guess the
reporter is accurate in his/her insinuation that our people in the know
sat frozen, or worse indifferent. It has happened that way in the past,
protected by bureaucracy.

I don't expect to ever know the whole answer. That's OK.
I do hope that we (humanity) will use the experience to hone our ability
to reduce the impact in the future.
Especially those of us who can do something about it, not so much we who
sit on the sideline.
As for myself, I expect to choose a little deeper anchorage from time to
time.

Skip

On 28 Dec 2004 21:36:26 -0800, wrote:

Glen,
We were on a friends boat anchored at Nai Harn. Our boat is on the hard
at Boat Lagoon undergoing some paintwork and new teak deck.
Our total up and down movement would not have exceeded 3 metres.

That's a great argument for laying out plenty of scope, isn't it? I
imagine some short-scope rodes in shallower waters broke anchor and
went aground.

R.

"~^ beancounter ~^" wrote in
ups.com:

wow...good luck to all sailors / crusers in the effected areas...so far
us media is reporting 10 countries effected..(all the way to africa)...
50,000+ dead, 1/3 of them children......the images we are getting
are un-real.........nature can be so powerful.......

An exellent animation is available from NOAA:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/video/t...onesia2004.mov

WaIIy wrote in
:

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:06:32 GMT, Skip VerDuin
wrote:

Today I hear the US
(maybe USGS or NOAA) says "there was nothing we could do even though we
knew for hours it was going to happen" so maybe these agencies need a
swift kick to change an attitude.

What would you have them do?

The infrastructure to warn the people it affected is not in place.

Here is a good article on the lack of infrastructure for the warning:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...ing_usat_x.htm